Category: Pakistan

China’s strategy of economic colonisation of its regional neighbours has just been laid bare

Gwadar Port in Balochistan … in southern Pakistan, rather

… A restaurant owner is visited by representatives of a certain organisation that wishes to invest in his business. This is an offer he cannot refuse. Soon the “investors” are there every day, walking out sides of meat and crates of wine and liquor through the back door while the owner frets and worries about his vanishing profits. Eventually, when there is nothing left to take, the investors burn down the premises for the insurance money. Hence the old joke: “Sorry to hear about the fire, Lenny.” “Shh! Tomorrow.”

Well, it appears a “restaurant” that we might call “The Taste of Lahore”, or something similar, perhaps “The Karachi Grill” or “Memories of Rawalpindi”, has just been invested in by a certain powerful organisation. Let’s see whether anything is being walked out the back door, and whether there are any suspicious jerry cans of gasoline stacked in the alley out back.

Examining the tactics India can use to turn the tables on its less-than-all-powerful tormentors

Look at a map of South Asia. I’ve said before that China’s unappealing wingmen are Pakistan and North Korea but luckily North Korea has shown no interest in India, lying as it does to the far east of the Middle Kingdom. China, though, right on top of India, is a threatening presence, while also shaking a fist at all the other countries in its neighbourhood, such as Vietnam and the Phillipines, as the People’s Republic throws its weight around the region. Pakistan is its enthusiastic henchman where India is concerned.

China’s strategy for regional – hemispheric? – domination consists of several elements. Forget for now its economy: nearly all growth in China today and tomorrow is debt-fuelled and will deplete wealth in the long run (Michael Pettis has done the calculations here). In fact it’s exactly because China’s real economic growth is grinding to a halt and its debt load reaching nose-bleed levels that expansion and power must now be projected by additional, alternative means.

Modi and Doval ensure that Pakistan’s villainy is at last being internationalised.

If India seems to have an unusual affinity with Israel – they increasingly share trade and technology links and so on – it might partly be because their recent histories are oddly similar.

Both had the experience of declaring statehood as secular democracies at roughly the same time (India in 1947, Israel in 1948).

Then, immediately afterwards, both were attacked by Islamic neighbours: India by Pakistan; Israel by Egypt, Jordan, Syria and whoever else had a hammer. Israel was again attacked by Muslim neighbours in 1967 (the Six-Day War) and yet again in 1973 (the Yom Kippur War). Stridently Islamic Pakistan attacked India again in 1965 and yet again in 1971.

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I am Andy Marino, biographer of Narendra Modi, and this site is designed to explain Indian economics and finance, government and politics, culture and history to Western investors, businessmen and entrepreneurs. For more information, click on my Intro section.